CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Directors of Central Intelligence

Stansfield Turner (1923- )

DCI, 9 Mar. 1977-20 Jan. 1981

Included here:

1. Material on Turner

Quoting Costa Rican authorities, Associated
Press, "Ex-C.I.A. Chief Hurt and Wife Killed in Air Crash,"
New York Times, 17 Jan. 2000, reports that Admiral Turner was injured
and his wife killed in a plane crash in Costa Rica on 15 January 2000.
Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2000, A12, reports Admiral Turner's condition
as "stable but critical"; he "suffered head and chest injuries"
in the plane crash that killed his wife and others.

Using Adm. Turner's Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (1985) as his launchpad, the author tears into and even ridicules the former DCI's management of the CIA during his 1977-1981 tenure. Because of Epstein's special interest in the case, he also accuses Turner of knowingly "falsifying" the history of the hostile interrogation and extrajudicial incarceration of Yuri Nosenko by blaming it on James Angleton.

"Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director, [has] described the ... circumstances that led him ... to waive agency regulations that prohibited the use of American journalists ... as cover for clandestine intelligence activities. Shortly after Muslim extremists occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran ... on Nov. 4, 1979, an American journalist in Iran 'who had unique access' met with CIA personnel to discuss how they 'thought he could help to resolve a problem,' Turner said in an interview.

"Because he believed American lives were at stake, Turner said, he approved using a waiver put in place in 1977 by the Carter administration that lifted the 1976 blanket prohibition against using journalists approved by Turner's predecessor, George Bush. 'I didn't hesitate in calling on him [the journalist] and we were on the verge of doing so,' Turner said, 'but circumstances intervened and we didn't do so'.... Two weeks ago, the journalistic community's discomfort with the waiver policy was rekindled when a blue ribbon task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations recommended a new look be taken at all such limits on unofficial cover."